Talk:Anonymous (hacker group)

Sourcing on Aubrey Cottle being a "founder"

I'm having trouble with sourcing on the infobox about him being a founder (assuming a collective can even have it), currently it links to an article on "Techtimes" which appears pretty badly written, in parts reading almost like autotranslated, by one "Jamie Pancho". It cites an article on The Atlantic, which says "When 4chan began cracking down on organizing raids, Anonymous migrated to Cottle’s copycat site, 420chan, which he’d created to discuss his principal interests: drugs and professional wrestling. And Cottle became the de facto leader of Anonymous, a role he relished. It was during this time, Cottle told me, that he codified a set of half-joking rules for the group that became known as the infamous “Rules of the Internet.” They included “3. We are Anonymous 4. Anonymous is legion 5. Anonymous never forgives.”

The only source of him being a "founder" then is himself, with the article contradictingly stating Anonymous was already established in 4chan before they migrated to 420chan.

A search for his name and Anonymous only returns these chained articles. A search for his alias Kirtaner and anonymous, fails to return any relevant result. For a Good article to make such bold claims with this poor sourcing is questionable at least. Loganmac (talk) 04:15, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Yeah I'm in agreement with you here, I don't think Cottle can be listed as the founder when he's the only one to say he is and it quite clearly states that it existed before hand anyway before joining 420chan. I think he should be removed from the infobox, if anything a bit can be included in the article itself about his claim to it but you can say it's confirmed he is. NZFC^(talk)(cont) 11:23, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Gregg Housh, who was considered the defacto resource on the early period of the group, confirmed Cottle was the founder on Twitter and the article in The Atlantic would have been above and beyond fact checked. There's also a deluge of press now covering these points. It's about to hit saturation point. People keep making the mistake of conflating Anonymous on 4chan with the hacker group proper. There is a lot of retconning in order, basically. 174.88.91.209 (talk) 12:03, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/founder-of-hacker-group-anonymous-reveals-his-ultimate-endgame-11604336926 https://www.thefocus.news/tech/aubrey-cottle/ https://www.9news.com.au/national/founder-of-anonymous-hacker-group-aubrey-cottle-says-taking-down-qanon-in-reddit-ama/f104e6d5-6f7b-4df2-a178-1821ce921376 174.88.91.209 (talk) 12:14, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

afaik 9news isn't a reliable source. I contacted the author of the Atlantic article and he explicitly said the founder claim isn't a statement of fact, just Aubrey's word (the wording on the article already states "Cottle told me"). Marketwatch and other are all basing their articles on The Atlantic story. The history of Anonymous as a collective is already properly sourced to existing in 2005 at least , while Cottle mentions he started "the beginnings" of it "in December 2006" in a previous AMA, where he fails to call himself a founder [1]

By then there had been multiple Habbo and Second Life raids as documented by VICE, Wired, here and here. The article on the Habbo raids has more sources on this, as well as the entry on Know Your Meme.

VICE says "by 2004, users of 4chan's /b/ message boards were collectively referring to themselves as "Anonymous" whenever they organized internet pranks (the name comes from 4chan users posting anonymously on the site, as you don't have to register for an account). It is unclear which was created first: their catchphrase poem—"we are Anonymous, we are Legion, we do not forgive, we do not forget, expect us"—or the black and white graphic of the headless man in the suit that became their logo.

Either way, both were in heavy circulation by 2005 whenever the collective came together to harass people, like teen girls who had turned down or cheated on a 4channer, MySpace users with cringe-worthy profile photos, or animal abusers. At this point, Anonymous was mostly for dicking around" Loganmac (talk) 13:56, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Seems to be a self serving claim without any real corroboration. We should remove it. - MrOllie (talk) 13:59, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

As someone who was around back then, there was a lot of confusing misreporting on the origin of the hacker group this article represents. Consider the timeline of anonymous article as your flashpoint, Aubrey was basically driving that. Gregg Housh’s statements backing him up are not insignificant whatsoever and are in essence the most solid confirmation here. Either way, his name has been present on this article for quite some time now and it is questionable that suddenly detractors have shown up after a clearly demonstrated vendetta on Reddit. 2605:8D80:669:3E37:ACAC:1CF1:BB66:70E0 (talk) 15:04, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

I would advise you to please assume WP:GOODFAITH, we can only go with what reliable sources say. Gregg Housh has already said he doesn't speak for Anonymous as a whole, with HuffPost saying he's a controversial figure for the group and that he doesn't speak for the entirety of it, a claim he repeated for an interview with CNN. In his book summary, he mentions "Anonymous features no distinct or recognized organization or leadership", a statement he repeated to Salon: “There is no leadership. There can’t be. That is the point of it all. That is why things like OpLastResort happen after all of these 'big arrests.' For those reasons it is absolutely ridiculous to say that Anon's leadership has been dismantled,” Housh appears to have been constantly reached for being one of the only publicly identified individuals in the early days. Loganmac (talk) 16:03, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Leader is not the same as founder. Housh has also publicly confirmed that he intentionally protected any information on Cottle’s involvement for his safety on Reddit and you can contact him via Twitter to confirm this. Yes, this is a lot of very confusing news, but it is verifiable. An earlier comment said they asked an article author about the claims, this is also before Housh publicly confirmed the veracity of it. I suggest reaching out to him. 2605:8D80:669:3E37:ACAC:1CF1:BB66:70E0 (talk) 16:19, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Our article was based on the Atlantic story, and the author has disavowed that claim. We're going to have to wait for some other reliable source to become available (if one does). We cannot base claims in our article on 'Go ask Housh about it' or 'check reddit'. MrOllie (talk) 16:23, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 24 November 2020

In the Operation Nigeria section, there is this sentence with four citations:

Anonymous even shutted down banks! [180] [181] [182] [183]

The grammar is poor, please change to something like:

"The websites of many banks were even compromised!" "Anonymous even successfully compromised the security of banks!" SonOfLain (talk) 19:21, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

 Done – Thjarkur (talk) 21:04, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 28 February 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved (non-admin closure) (t · c) buidhe 18:07, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

---

Anonymous (group) → Anonymous (hacker group) – WP:PRECISION : Anonymous (band) is also a "group". Also "(group)" on en.wp is the dab used by music editors for boy-bands. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:57, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

• Move to Anonymous per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. This article gets 10 times the pageviews of the next most sought article and over 80% of all views. It's clearly what most readers expect at the title. This will also solve the issue of any possible confusion with the band. Move the dab page to Anonymous (disambiguation). - Station1 (talk) 23:09, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose this suggestion, the internet group is clearly not WP:PRIMARYTOPIC in terms of long-term significance.--Ortizesp (talk) 23:41, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Also oppose this suggested counterproposal, Anonymous is a populous dab page, and the internet group is clearly not WP:PRIMARYTOPIC in terms of long-term significance. In ictu oculi (talk) 15:34, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose while a band of 4 people may technically be a group of people I doubt anyone looking up this term would be looking for the band.--70.27.244.104 (talk) 06:15, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
• Support per nomination. An imprecise and extremely broad stand-alone parenthetical qualifier, "(group)" definitely needs enhancement. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 10:10, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
• Support per nom. Also, most certainly not the primary meaning of the word. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:57, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Edit request - 29 June 2021 : Irrelevant reference

Reference 3 seems to be unrelated to where it is linked, and furthermore only mentions "Anonymous" very marginally. I would remove it entirely :)

Sebpiq (talk) 14:54, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Edit request - 29 June 2021 : Link to Operation Payback article

Link the section about "Operation Payback" to the main article Operation Payback.

Sebpiq (talk) 14:56, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 August 2021

Request to add some of Anonymous' 2021 associations. Specifically, there are multiple articles on "Anonymous" threatening Elon Musk over Bitcoin which would be an interesting snippet of history. Based on the assessment of the various news articles, I would say that the threat cannot be validated to the main group, however it's interesting nonetheless as Elon Musk actually took the time to respond to the threat with a meme.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2021/06/06/did-anonymous-really-just-threaten-elon-musk-over-viral-bitcoin-tweets/?sh=4d52db143279

Elon Responds: https://www.hindustantimes.com/trending/elon-musk-mocks-hacktivist-group-anonymous-with-meme-after-their-viral-clip-101623742808031.html Johnjhacking (talk) 15:47, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 August 2021: Request to re-evaluate the claim of "Founder" of Anonymous

In prior discussions, sourcing about Aubrey Cottle's legitimacy as the founder of the group was discussed - and he was removed as the founder without resolution. After evaluating all sides of the argument,the Atlantic article still has him as the de-facto leader of Anonymous - a year later, along with many sub-articles and news coverage that was created as a result. If the Author has retracted the claim then then there should be evidence that we can all use collectively to affirm the backpedal. I see multiple ways this can be re-evaluated. The author of the article could edit out his title as founder in the Atlantic news article, or could post about the retraction elsewhere. Currently I haven't seen anyone retracting their claims, and I don't think random internet users with no linked public-credibility is enough to take precedent over published, reputable news articles. In addition, stating "I was around when Cottle was around" can't be an adequate reference either. Solving this requires citations of him as the founder, there's currently plenty unless that Atlantic article author retracts which would effectively void all sub-articles. I've seen more evidence of him being recognized and called the Founder than sufficient references going against the claims. Aside from the Atlantic sub-articles, there's also the documentary - Q: Into the Storm which highlights him as the Founder of Anonymous. This description can also be seen on his IMDb page, where he has filmography credit for being the creator of 420chan and the Founder of Anonymous. Unless there's adequate refute from the public space (which I haven't seen) I think that Cottle should be returned to the page as the Founder of Anonymous, again, unless more conflicting information is presented that has a factual basis. Earlier in this talk, someone had also mentioned the "Anonymous has no leader" point. Again, I have to agree that a Founder is quite different than a leader. The ideology had to come from somewhere and both Gregg Housh and the media have confirmed that he has indeed spawned most of the ideology that has become the modern day Anonymous. My suggestion would be that we affirm his claim as the Founder of Anonymous and return him to the page as such unless we are presented with adequate media references that would go against this otherwise. Johnjhacking (talk) 16:38, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

 Not done Consensus is against this, as demonstrated in the discussion section above. The sourcing isn't there, and the chronology doesn't work. - MrOllie (talk) 16:53, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Where was the consensus against this? You stated that the author of the Atlantic article retracted the claim. Do you have a citation?Johnjhacking (talk) 17:52, 16 August 2021 (UTC)